Declaring that South Vietnam is “the only legal state,” Ngo Dinh Diem, Premier of the State of Vietnam, announces that he will not enter into negotiations with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) on elections as long as the Communist government remains in power in Hanoi.
The elections had been scheduled for 1956 under the provisions of the Geneva Peace Accords of 1954 that brought an end to the First Indochina War. Diem reaffirmed the position laid down in his broadcast of July 6 in which he stated that South Vietnam was not bound by the Geneva Accords.
